What to Expect When You’re Expecting
Five couples face the challenges of pregnancy.
Directed by Kirk Jones
(PG-13)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This ensemble romantic comedy “isn’t as charmless as you might have feared,” said Farran Smith Nehme in the New York Post. “Dully shot,” “predictably plotted,” and loaded with jokes that seem older than the 28-year-old pregnancy guide it’s named after, it’s nevertheless partially redeemed by “a cast working furiously to sell every scene.” With five different couples enduring the trials of gestation, the “cobbled-together” screenplay has too many story lines to track, said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. But Elizabeth Banks is very funny as a baby expert suffering through a complicated pregnancy, and Jennifer Lopez “has some well-acted moments” as a woman seeking to adopt. Plus, there’s Chris Rock, “who gets to liven things up as the ringleader of a beleaguered fathers’ group.” Still, the performances aren’t “nearly enough” to offset the “hackneyed” script, said Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic. What to Expect is “a mishmash of mediocrity”—a grab bag of cartoonish situations that feel so foreign to the events of an actual pregnancy that they might as well have been “set on Mars.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Selfies ban in art galleries: a sign of the times?
Talking Point Priceless art has been damaged by visitors desperate to take a snap with star attractions, leading some galleries and museums to start fighting back
-
Quiz of The Week: 21 – 27 June
Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
The Week Unwrapped: How do you turn plastics into paracetamol?
Podcast Plus, what is the Wagner Group doing now? And why is it so hard to find a job after university?